“Only the truly desperate would buy from an early stage startup…”

-Edith Harbaugh, the Co-Founder and Executive Chair at LaunchDarkly.

Recently, we held an event in our offices for the Uncork portfolio founders and our network that featured Edith Harbaugh, the founder and executive chair of LaunchDarkly. She shared her incredible story about how she used founder led sales to take her tiny startup to a success story in just a few years.

Edith and her co-founder, John Kodumal, started LaunchDarkly in 2014 with the belief that software powers the world and that they could empower all teams to make better software. LaunchDarkly created and pioneered the feature management category, and has grown to over $100M ARR and helped 5,000 customers including Atlassian, IBM and Intuit.

Edith shared her journey of getting the company’s first 10 customers, which took 18 months. Here are some key takeaways from her presentation:

• Content marketing is king: Creating high-quality, informative content can establish your company as a thought leader and attract potential customers. For her, content about feature flagging was scarce when LaunchDarkly started, and their articles gained significant traction. One of the company’s first customers came in from one of their content pieces.

• Always be closing: When she first started the company, Edith did everything she could to bring in customers. She told the audience she was relentless when trying to get meetings by posting on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and reaching out to former colleagues, friends, and acquaintances. She and her co-founder installed LaunchDarkly for free on people’s computers to get initial feedback and build relationships.

• Be a Puffer Fish: Edith stressed the importance of looking like a bigger, more mature company. For example, don’t post photos of your startup’s foosball tournament.

• Don’t be afraid to charge for your product: Edith stressed the importance of charging for your product from the outset. When starting, she charged as little as $20 but advised that charging helps validate your offering and ensures that customers value it. Once they shifted to enterprise sales, they quickly realized that enterprise customers want to buy like an enterprise. Once they gained confidence, she was able to ask for more. Then the product improved so she could ask for even more — something you get the rhythm of. She told the audience, “Most people have some sort of budget, and it’s probably higher than you think.”

• Enterprise sales require trust: Building trust with enterprise customers takes time and effort. Edith emphasized the need to demonstrate commitment and be available to support customers throughout their journey. Enterprise customers will pay more but require a lot of attention. They are not going to integrate the product without you being there to help them.

• References make the signing of the second five customers “easy”: Once LaunchDarkly had its first five customers, the second five came in one per month. She said the references from current customers were a game-changer, saying, “The first five are agonizing because we had no references — references give other people more confidence, and that pays. Then reputation and brand speak for themselves.”

Thank you to Edith for generously sharing her invaluable insights on winning her first customers while building LaunchDarkly. We hope her journey and the strategies she employed to acquire her first 10 customers will be useful to other founders who are just starting their own journeys!